the past, blasting

Wait, aren’t we in France? Shouldn’t we be wearing berets, pounding croissants, and randomly going on strike? What’s up with the sudden appearance of earth tones and sunshine in that picture above? Why does it look like we’re living inside a giant brain? And, most importantly, what’s up with the whole family suddenly wearing pajamas in public?

More people should try wearing pajamas in public, frankly. Not only are they extremely comfortable, it’s also hard to get mad at someone cutting you off in traffic when you’re wearing jammies with feet. Road rage would plummet, comfort would soar, and best of all, we’d all be somewhat flame-retardant. Hmm. I’m pretty sure this paragraph has officially passed  into tangenthood. Let’s move on.

So really, man…what the heck?

Okay, it’s India. Maybe you guessed it, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you smelled the slightly fetid funk that infused itself into the very fiber of our digital camera’s memory card and is now transfusing itself via the magic of the Internet out your own computer screen, giving you the Smell-o-net experience that could only be one place – India.

I don’t really want to get into India a whole lot, mainly because we already got out of it and feel fortunate to have done so with life, limb, and family intact. Also, it would take me an Internet’s worth of disk space to capture all the incredible experiences we had there and I don’t want to get blamed for killing the Internet.

Suffice it to say that this time last year, we were up to our elbows in India, spending a high-intensity three weeks with Kristanne’s brother’s family (the “BollyBohners”), touring the temples, riding the elephants, and learning how stop the perma-wince that accompanies your first 10 days of near-misses and almost-crashes on Indian roads.

India is high-intensity, always-on, a complete and utter assault on each and every one of your senses. There’s good and bad in that – it’s completely enervating, but it can also be overwhelming, especially if you’re not accustomed to cows in the road, elephants in the swimming hole, and monkeys on your back. These are not so much cute expressions gleaned from our stay as they are things that happened.

kinda seems like you’re “getting into it,” dude…

India was a place I never expected to visit, but with Kristanne’s travelatin’ brother residing there for the last couple years, we couldn’t say no to the amazing opportunity. I mean, I’m joking a lot here ’cause that’s kinda what I do, but seriously, India? Who wouldn’t want to go if they could?

Upon arrival, Chuck and Lisa broke us in slowly, giving us a full three hours of sleep before helping us gain our bearings by shoving us in cars and driving us 10 hours to the state of Tamil Nadu to a highly coveted pilgrimage site. There, we sweated our way through packed shrines while the locals touched our children to verify that they were real. Photos ensued. And, yes, this qualifies as “breaking you in slowly” for the Travelator/atrix.

After a couple weeks of this sort of nurturing acclimation, we were deemed ready to venture out on our own. So, with a gentle shove from the nest, we ventured north to Rajasthan, landing in the lovely pink city of Jaipur.

During our first day on the street, we visited Jantar Mantar and its fantastic collection of  large-scale 18th century astronomical instruments. As we left, talking about how more places should have names that rhyme and giant sundials, and opining on whether we should rename our house something cool like Heatons Sweetuns and maybe put in an observatory, suddenly what I can only characterize as a gang of suspiciously earnest youth accosted us. Well-dressed ones, too….the worst kind.

When faced with situations like this, I have a fairly sophisticated response, borne from years of international travel – I run screaming in the opposite direction. Nuanced, I know. For whatever reason, Kristanne finds this response “ludicrous” or “embarrassing” or “immature redneck garbage”, so she’s been subtly encouraging me to change my ways by, say, grabbing the back of my belt when I try to flee so that I do a sort of out-of-shape 45-year-old’s version of the RoadRunner burnout, wheels spinning slowly in a pathetic little cloud of dust. It is, as they say, a teachable moment.

So, with my flight once again curtailed, I was left to hear what the aforementioned Earnest Five had to say. It was clear there was a shtick involved. They all carried small notebooks, looked a little like Indian Jehovah’s Witnesses, and were so unabashed in their openhearted warmth that you couldn’t tell whether this was the slickest hustle on the subcontinent or you were about to join their cult and make it the Earnest Six. Maybe both.

As it turned out, what they really wanted to do was sing us a song as a symbol of cross-cultural friendship. Somehow, it turned out, our clever move of wearing pajamas hadn’t been quite enough to disguise the fact that we are not, actually, Indian. And here we thought we were blending.

Though I still maintain that the ole “Scream and Flee” response would have been more efficient, at this point there was no great way to get out of the situation other than just to listen to whatever song they might have for us. Go for it, Earnest Five. Rock the house.

The leader counted them in and they all fired up as one voice on the first line:

“YOU ARE A FOREIGNER!”

Hmm. Apparently, we’d been outed. Passersby began to stare. A small crowd began to coalesce out of what previously had been just scattered humanity…just what every American tourist looking to maintain a low profile wants on the streets of a new city. Too late for Scream and Flee?

“YOU ARE A FOREIGNER!”

What the heck? Were there other lines in this song or were we just going to be hectored and harangued as foreigners for fifteen minutes? I wasn’t really feeling the Welcome Tuk-Tuk.

“You are a message carrier! You break the manmade barrier!”

Okay, this was better. Now, despite the xenophobic overtones of the intro, it sounded like we were some sort of exotic superheroes, maybe even a mixture of the Roman god Mercury and the Incredible Hulk.

“A country is not geography. Nor it is tea or coffee!”

Apparently, we’d now entered the Earnest Five’s psychedelic period, when they were too strung out on tandoori chicken, hash, and palak paneer to construct sensible lyrics. It was during this period when the band America wrote their famous “Been Through The Desert On A Horse With No Name” song, featuring the memorable, “There were plants and birds and rocks and things” line. A lot of bands just stop their careers right there.

These kids weren’t stopping, though. I swear, that song lasted 20 minutes, may have had a drum solo, and definitely featured at least one “break down” period where they got really quiet and did a little spoken rap in hushed voices like David Lee Roth used to do with Van Halen. Outside of the music of Billy Joel, I’m not sure I’ve ever more wanted a song to just, at long last, mercifully, gott im himmel, end. We were trapped as the love locus of a group of well-meaning international brothertarians. With an audience.

Bringing it all back home

So, unlike, say, “Piano Man,” this song actually did eventually end, after which the crowd peacefully dispersed, leaving us to exchange email addresses, because, I guess that’s what the Non-Scream-and-Fleers of the world do when they meet dangerous bands of well-meaning youth. Still, we were careful to give them the Yahoo accounts we never check and only use when signing up for things we’re pretty sure are going to result in spamalanches in our inbox.

So, that’s why we missed these when they first came, but during a search for something else last week, Kristanne turned up a full set of audio files sent from the Earnest Five last year  featuring what we’re sincerely hoping is their entire catalog. I’m linking “To a Foreigner” below so you can hear the magic for yourself.  Enjoy, my brother. Close the office of passports. These are empty gods.

To a Foreigner!

anything else, funny boy?

It’s winter vacation here, so the kids are off for the next two weeks. There will be skiing, relaxing, and hopefully more days like today where we just find a few cool things right near the house we hadn’t yet seen. That picture below is part of the grounds of an old chateau overlooking the Isere valley. It’s now the town hall of Montbonnot. We were trying a new bakery for a tart we were bringing to dinner at some new friends’ house and found this, too. Also, a fromagerie with a generous approach to free samples for kids. Kinsey went chevre, Quinn went bleu, and together, we all took a little trip to cheese heaven.  I just wish the fromager hadn’t felt the need to scream, “You are a foreigner!” at us when he handed over our cheese and our change. Word just seems to get out, I guess.

See you next time…on the Odyssey!